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Bruce Mendelsohn was in his Boylston Street office when the blasts happened; he rushed into the chaos to help a woman and her son (Published Saturday, Feb 1, 2014)

(NECN: Greg Wayland) - Bruce Mendelsohn snapped some street scenes on Marathon Monday, just pictures of runners jogging gently toward the approaching finish line, doubtless glad to be making that personal triumph. Things were going to change in a matter of moments. He was with his brother and his friends, partying three floors up in his Boylston Street office.

“Out of the corner of my eye, there was a flash followed by an immediate boom. The concussion from the blast blew me off my seat onto the ground....And I yelled at my brother, I said, ‘get everybody back from the windows! There's going to be a secondary.’ As soon as I said 'secondary', the second one went off. .... then I said to Aaron, my younger brother, I said, ‘get everybody to the back’...I ran down the three flights of stairs. I ran out of the lobby and I ran like into a sea of glass. And that's really like what I remember the most is just this sea of glass.... And I look over to my right and there's a woman on the ground and she's holding her calf, right. So I grabbed like a t-shirt. I saw a t-shirt, because there was detritus all over the place. I grabbed a t-shirt, I run over to her, I get down, I put a tourniquet on her. I see a woman who has -- she has blond hair and she's got blood on her face and she's howling for her child. Where's my son? Where's my son? So I look over about 20 feet away and there's a boy kind of wandering around, and he's dazed. And I run over to him, and I say, ‘hey buddy, are you looking for your mommy?’"

Bruce went on frantically telling us his story, of how he went on lending aid wherever he could.

"Then after about 12 to 15 minutes, a special operations guy came up to me and said, ‘who are you?’ And I said, ‘I'm just a guy trying to help.’ And he said, ‘listen, guy, if you really want to help, get out of here.’"

Bruce went back to his office, emotions still roiled.

"It makes me feel good that I helped, but I feel badly that I couldn't do more."

He snapped some final pictures out his window of a very different scene from just capturing for all time, an image of a day transformed from joy to horror.